Parenting: Have Consequences with "Bite"

Establishing reasonable expectations for your children in all aspects of their lives, including school, home, and family, is essential for raising children who are responsible, respectful, successful, and happy. But expectations without consequences are like a dog with a loud bark, but no bite; scary at first, but ultimately harmless. Consequences are what cause your children to live up to your expectations. Now, I don't expect you to actually bite your children to get them to behave appropriately nor does using that metaphor intend to suggest that the consequences you create should hurt your children in any way. But the consequences you connect to your expectations should be just unpleasant enough that, when they are confronted with the option of living up to or failing at your expectations, they decide that the benefits of doing what you expect outweighs the costs.

Unfortunately these days, many parents seem to have a hard time with consequences at two levels. First, they don't establish any consequences, perhaps because that way they won't have to actually enforce them. Second, many parents establish consequences with the best of intensions, but aren't good at following through. The reality is that playing the role of "tough" parent is difficult. It takes time when many family's lives are already overflowing with things to do. It takes energy that harried parents may not have. Following through with consequences can create conflict and ill feelings, interfering with the goal of many parents these days to be friends with their children (which they shouldn't be in the first place!). And kids these days are really good negotiators, possessing the ability to talk their parents out of administering the full consequence. Promises of better behavior in the future and demonstrations of love can seduce parents into letting their children off the hook (bad idea!). And, the bottom line is that not following through with the consequence is just the easiest and most expedient thing to do.

Having consequences doesn't have to turn you into a Kim Jong-Il or a big, green ogre (like Shrek without the cuteness). Consequences just mean that you are letting your children know that there are some pretty darned reasonable things (at least to someone who is not a child) that you expect of them and that they must learn to become a functioning member of your family and our society.

You can actually avoid the dictator or ogre labels by including your children in the discussion of expectations and consequences. Clearly state your expectations and establish and communicate the consequences of your children's meeting or not meeting those expectations. Explain why you are setting the expectations and the consequences so your children can see the benefit of acting in accordance with those expectations. This discussion helps ensure clear communication and understanding, and encourages open dialogue between you and your children.

Ask your children for input into this process, particularly in coming up with fair consequences. If your children help create the consequences, they'll have a hard time arguing against them when they face your "wrath" because they failed to meet an expectation. This fairness allows your children to justify their punishment when they don't meet the expectations and encourages them to internalize the expectations because the consequences are not so severe that they feel forced to comply.

Consequences must also be meaningful to your children. They need to see the personal value of meeting the expectations. External benefits can include parental approval or receiving some predetermined reward (for example, receiving their allowance). Internal value can mean the intrinsic satisfaction of doing the right thing. If you explain the rationale behind the expectation, create a fair consequence and emphasize that they have the power to choose whether to meet or violate the expectation, then they're more likely to live up to your expectations because they feel ownership of both the expectation and consequence.

Parents who enforce excessive or arbitrary consequences risk anger, resentment, resistance, and rebellion in their children. If you establish a consequence that they view as harsh and extreme, your children may meet the expectation for a while out of fear of punishment, but will likely, at some point, rebel against it. Most harmfully, they won't internalize and accept the expectation as their own and will likely cease their efforts at meeting the expectation as soon as they are out of your control.

At the same time, consequences that are insufficient for the transgression are equally ineffective. In other words, the punishment should fit the crime. Observes parenting author John Rosemond, "The fact is, the outrageous offense requires an equally outrageous response. Today's parents are often reluctant to employ outrageous consequences-and by this I definitely do not mean hurtful, cruel, or mean-because professional psychobabblers have intimidated them into believing that outrageous discipline is psychologically harmful. Big Consequences cause children great discomfort and inconvenience, which is precisely the idea. But are they psychologically harmful? Not unless you think that improved behavior is bad."

You need to then firmly and consistently adhere to the expectations and consequences that you establish. If you don't administer the consequence fully, they will come to believe that the threatened consequences will not be meted out next time. Every time a children is let off without a consequence for failing to meet an expectation, the value of the expectation is lost. In other words, your children must learn that you mean business!

A family I used to work for was constantly having behavioural problems with their little boy. They warned me when I started working for them that he could be difficult. I spent a whole week with him, always enforcing punishments when I promised them. Things were getting slightly better, but then one day he had a relapse to previous bad behaviour and slammed my foot (bare) in a door so hard it ended up bruising the whole foot. I was so mad for a minute I grabbed him up by the back of the shirt. Took two deep breaths and told him very calmly to go wait in the dining room for me to tell him what his punishment was. He waited. Very quietly. Very frightened. Because, unlike his parents, I wasn't blustering: he was going to pay.

As it turned out, his punishment was an hour of listening to me read a book for my dissertation, but the seeming promise of my rage scared him into good behaviour for the rest of my time with them. (2 1/2 years)

So why behave for the nanny and not the parent? Because parents (poor things) want to be liked. Nannys are just doing their job. We're not going to put up with a bunch of stuff we're not getting paid for. Please don't read this as me in anyway saying parents can't do the job: they can. They just have to recognize that there are times your kids won't like you.

For 2 1/2 years I worked for a family as a nanny for their little boy who behaved perfectly well for me and like a devil for them. They would always ask me what I'd done to make him behave and I would tell them "I always do what I say I'm going to do, and I make him try everything by himself first"

Time and again I would watch his mother swear that if he did (insert bad behavior here) ONE MORE TIME, she would spank him/ground him/take away his game system. Time and again I would watch him do it, then cry and say he was sorry, and she wouldn't punish him at all. One time he punched her. Hard. She still didn't punish him.

I know everyone wants their kids to like them, but a little dislike in the beginning can head off a lot of pain for them in the future. (And possibly the parents growing to dislike the child)

For 2 1/2 years I worked for a family as a nanny for their little boy who behaved perfectly well for me and like a devil for them. They would always ask me what I'd done to make him behave and I would tell them "I always do what I say I'm going to do, and I make him try everything by himself first"

Time and again I would watch his mother swear that if he did (insert bad behavior here) ONE MORE TIME, she would spank him/ground him/take away his game system. Time and again I would watch him do it, then cry and say he was sorry, and she wouldn't punish him at all. One time he punched her. She still didn't punish him.

I know everyone wants their kids to like them, but a little dislike in the beginning can head off a lot of pain for them in the future. (And possibly the parents growing to dislike the child)

I constantly tell parents that they aren't supposed to be friends with their children (until the kids grow) and being liked shouldn't be a relevant issue. They need to be respected and perhaps even feared a bit (not in the "I will hurt you" sense, but rather in the "I mean business" sense).

The clear message I get from kids (that they would never tell their parents) is that they want to have expectations established and limits set for them because they can't self-regulate sufficiently yet (read about "executive functioning). Many parents these days are either too busy, too lazy, too selfish, or need to be their children's friend more than they want to do the hard work of parenting.